


Glitter and Gold

by Avenging_is_My_Day_Job



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Bucky Barnes Remembers, Gen, Not Captain America: The Winter Soldier Compliant, Not Really Character Death, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Protective Steve Rogers, Road Trips, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-14
Updated: 2018-03-14
Packaged: 2019-03-31 02:44:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13965651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Avenging_is_My_Day_Job/pseuds/Avenging_is_My_Day_Job
Summary: After Project Insight is ruined and HYDRA is exposed, Steve takes a pretty bad fall into the Potomac. Seeing as he's riddled with bullet holes and not conscious enough to hold his breath in the water, the Winter Soldier, conflicted over surfacing memories, saves his life and hides him from HYDRA operatives scouring the riverbank.Steve takes the opportunity to run. People believe he's dead, at least for now, and that means he can try to shape his life how he wants to, even if his best friend doesn't remember him. He's going to try his damnedest to help Bucky recover, while keeping them both from being found and dragged back into a life that both of them want to leave behind.





	Glitter and Gold

_Everything hurt._

Steve wasn’t a stranger to the sensation, but it had been so long since it had washed over him like this. Since he could wake up and have the discomfort ebb away. He dragged his eyes open, vision sluggishly adjusting to the light while he tried to process the new environment.

Across the room he saw a familiar face, and for just a moment he was back there. When his sight cleared, he realised that time had past and the figure that joined him in silence was a far cry from the man he knew. 

He looked around, trying to discern details of the room while the fog in his mind cleared.

Steve didn’t move. He tuned out the ache and kept watch of the man through the corner of his eye. Every part of him wanted to believe he wasn’t dangerous, but his brain, his logical side that sounded too much like Natasha was on high alert.

This was a man who was responsible -no he wasn’t- for dozens of assassinations. A man that through Sitwell into traffic. That kicked a SHIELD agent through a jet turbine. A man who fought him and won. And here he was, injured and weak and trapped in a small room with him.

_But he’s my best friend._

_He_ was _your best friend._

And now it all came rushing back. Not just the fight, but giving up. Letting the winter soldier beat him within an inch of his life. Expecting to die. And yet here he was.

“Why did you bring me here?”

The Soldier kept his distance from him, watching him stir on the cot. The room was quiet and sounds from outside filtered through the building, softly echoing in the empty corridors. It didn't provide any semblance of comfort or security. Not for either man.

It had been a few days now, he gathered, if the state of his injuries was anything to go by. He didn't know, not the thought process behind it anyway, but The Soldier had contemplated leaving him behind, perhaps allowing the Natasha - The Spy - or Sam - The Man with Wings - to find him, but the risk of HYDRA’s stragglers arriving first was too great.

 

The Soldier eyed Steve warily. There was no hostility present, but any familiarity he had before on the Helicarrier was absent. He wasn’t refusing confrontation and prodding at his memories that didn’t exist. 

He shifted, keeping his back to the wall and the window and door in clear view. There was a glass bowl on the floor beside the cot, spent bullets piled inside with dried blood coating them.

“You know me,” he said, finally. His voice was hoarse and quiet, cracking with each word. 

Steve hesitated before speaking again. He had said those exact words… maybe he was only echoing them. 

It’s worth the risk. 

Steve pushed himself to sit up, feeling the uncomfortable tugging of stitches as he moved. By now he could probably take them out, bullet wounds never took long to heal for him.

“But you don’t know me,” he said, carefully gauging the other’s reaction. 

He made a show of moving slowly, assuring the man, his friend, that he wasn’t in any danger. 

The Soldier shook his head, looking down so that his hair fell over his face. His training, his _programming_ was clawing at his mind. He was supposed to know this man, The Target. Steve Rogers. He was supposed to be aware of his objectives. He failed in not knowing him. 

He looked to the glass bowl briefly, wondering if he would be spared punishment for his failure because he had saved the man's life. 

Steve followed his gaze to the floor, spotting the bowl before hee turned his head slowly, looking through the crease in the boards that covered the window. Still in DC. So, he had not only pulled him out of the river, but he’d taken the time to remove the bullets and stitch him up. That was something, right? Either he kept him alive because he knew him, or because he saw some use in him. He could work with that.

“You were keeping me away from HYDRA,” he concluded, turning away from the window once more.

That was proof enough for him that he wasn’t what HYDRA tried to make him. He wondered how much effort they had to put into keeping their soldier, Bucky, in line. If this is all it took for him to break away from their control, then… He shook his head, trying to dispel the horrifying thought.

 

 _No punishment required._ He had heard as much said after missions before. Not often, but more sympathetic handlers would allow him reprieve after he corrected mistakes. His programming reared its ugly head again, and he tensed. He had two options now. Run…run as far as he could go to escape his handlers and HYDRA, to become a person again. Or go back. SHIELD was HYDRA, and Rogers had been SHIELD, even if he wasn’t aware of the correlation. He couldn’t be the enemy?

It didn’t make sense. He couldn’t dwell on that, in any case, so he waited for The Target to move again. Or to speak. Anything to dispel the silence.

Steve noted the conflict in his friend’s expression. The longer they sat in silence, regarding each other with suspicion and wary trust, the more conflicted he felt himself. His best friend was standing in front of him. A shell of his best friend. But still him. 

As of right now, almost any path he took ended one way. Bucky being incarcerated. The information dump a few days earlier only served to expose HYDRA, but those files were expertly encrypted. Any evidence that pointed towards Bucky being innocent had yet to be uncovered. Depending on how deep the infiltration had gone, none of that would matter. 

“What’s your plan?” He asked, hoping beyond hope that Bucky didn’t plan to return to whoever had stuck around.

“Я не знаю,” he relented, correcting his words when he looked up and his eyes met The Target’s. “I don’t know.”

 _I don’t want to go back_ , he would say, but he was not permitted to want. 

Rogers was there but he was smaller. Hunched over a garbage can at some kind of amusement park. _Coney Island_ , his mind provided. The Target was wretching and The Soldier was there too, stifling laughter. Suddenly he was alone in a cold cell, wretching up broth that had been laced with poison. The Soldier dismissed the interlaced memories.

“I’m supposed to be a person.”

“You are a person,” Steve affirmed, frowning. “No matter what they said or did to you, you’re still a person.”

He finally stood, nauseous and hungry all at once. “We’re still in Washington. They’re probably looking for you… Are you okay to travel?” _Are you going to attack unsuspecting bystanders_ , was the real question. 

Slowly, The Soldier nodded. He understood The Target’s underlying fear, but his own was starting to make itself known. Three days and he had started to grasp at freedom, he wasn’t sure he wanted to risk losing it again.

A helicopter flew overhead, and he froze, expecting it to hover over the building and sent armed agents pouring into his hideaway, but it passed over. The sound of the spinning blades faded into the distance, but the alarm remained. The next one might be for them.

“Then you need to get out of the city,” Steve said, stepping closer to him. He kept a comfortable distance, to keep the other from feeling trapped or cornered.

“It might be a while before it’s safe. Find someplace secure and stay off the radar.”

Bucky, The Soldier, or whoever he was supposed to be didn't immediately respond. Steve realized that he wasn't conditioned to engage in conversation. 

“Where will you go?” The Soldier finally asked. The part of him that had laughed at his friend’s misfortune at Coney Island was asking. That part was bleeding through. He could feel it.

“With you. As far as I can,” he assured. He would at least help Bucky get out of sight. Maybe give him some supplies and money. “If you let me.”

He searched the room for a small blade or a pair of scissors. The sooner he cut the stitches and pulled them out, the better. He found a small knife beside the bowl, and gently severed the first set of stitches he found.

“We can get pretty far if no one knows I’m alive yet.” That sounded awful, but it would work. They weren’t going to look for a body in a crowd of living people. He didn't have a phone, and it was glaringly obvious that Bucky wouldn't either, so contacting someone was out of the question. He could find a way once they were outside of the city, distanced from HYDRA's and SHIELD's immediate influence.

* * *

There was a car... Well, technically there were cars everywhere, but Bucky had stashed one nearby. Stolen, of course, but it wasn't discreetly hidden, so it must not have been missed. Wedged in a narrow alley so it wasn't immediately noticed, but no effort put into obscuring it further from view.

Steve had offered to drive, but Bucky had stiffly brushed past him, removing the car's key from some nook behind the wheel. And as concerned as one might be with the Winter Soldier behind the wheel of a car -given his history of destroying them while they were still moving- it turned out to be better that way.

He navigated the city, carefully avoiding the crowded detours through residential streets now that major roadways were blocked off. Despite that, they still only made it out of DC at nightfall, hitting the freeway to the next state.

“ _And in other news,_ ” the car’s radio droned on, grating on The Soldier’s nerves. Rogers had turned it on two hours ago, muttering an insincere apology about needing some kind of background noise. “ _There are no updates regarding the disaster in Washington. While authorities round up HYDRA operatives all over the city, and the country, the search for Captain America’s -AKA Steve Rogers- remains continues._ ”

The Soldier gave a low growl, mimicking Rogers’s earlier motion to turn the radio’s switch. The journalists voices died down, leaving them in near perfect silence once more.

 _Oh god_. 

Steve sighed, not bothering turning it back up, or offering to change the station to something more bearable. They weren’t looking for a missing person, they were looking for a body. “The last time this happened, it didn’t turn out how they thought.” Everyone thinks he's dead and he turns up later, one hundred percent alive and kicking? 

The joke fell flat. He didn’t need to look at Bucky’s face to tell. Either the man didn’t understand it, or he did and was none too pleased. He snapped his mouth shut, refraining from adding “ _They just can’t seem to kill me_ ,” to try and deliver the punchline.

“You took all the stupid with you,” The Soldier said, following Rogers’s poorly timed attempt at humor. 

_He wasn’t sitting in a car anymore. He was in a smoky bar, sitting on a wooden chair surrounded by people. The Commandos, that voice provided once more. He was surrounded by the Commandos, and just as the Lady finished her story, he glared across the table at The Handler. “You jumped on a grenade?”_

_Then he wasn’t in the bar anymore, but undergoing a training sequence. His objective was to protect an operative. Someone threw a grenade into their path. It didn’t blow, but he figured that the two scenarios were vastly different, despite their similarities._

The car swerved into a shallow ditch, tires digging ruts into the mud. The Soldier froze, wide eyed and ramrod straight in the seat. 

Steve didn’t notice that Bucky had spaced out until the car swerved. The road was narrow and there was no shoulder, so one second the tires were on asphalt, the next they were in mud. He glanced over at Bucky and noted the horrified look.

“You’re okay, Bucky. You’re fine, you’re safe. I’m fine. Let me drive, okay? I can drive for a while, you just sleep a little.”

He waited a few moments to ensure that Bucky was back with him before slowly moving to open the car door. He stole a glance at the car’s clock, not surprised to see it was nearing midnight now. The roads were barren, which was a good thing. No witnesses to the accident, then no reports of it.

They wordlessly switched seats, and Steve slowly eased the car out of the ditch. 

Steve relaxed when Bucky fell asleep. He imagined that the other hadn’t gotten any rest in the last several days, let alone weeks. He’d fought it off like he wasn’t familiar with it.

As time rolled by and sunrise drew closer, Steve found a roadside motel to stop at. Rundown enough to be discreet. He’d had several hours to think about the situation, but that didn’t make coming to a decision any easier. If everyone thought he was dead, then they would move on…

His life would never play out ideally. He’d given that up when he agreed to Project Rebirth. Nothing that had happened since then had been what he wanted. But from here… He might have some semblance of control.

The Soldier woke when the lulling movement of the car eventually stopped. He cracked open his eyes, blinking away sleep while his vision adjusted to the light.

Sitting up straighter, he looked through the dingy windshield to see a ramshackle building with a neon road sign at the edge of the lot. There were a few other cars, and a thicket bordering the property. Not ideal for a safehouse, but functional for now.

He got out of the vehicle just in time to see Rogers returning from the office. 

"We can sleep here before moving on," the man suggested, and The Soldier removed a key card from his hand to examine it. _ROOM 15_ it said. 

"Your assistance is no longer required," The Soldier replied, giving him a blank expression. 

"Buck-" Steve began, a pained expression crossing his face, "You don't have to do this alone."

"Yes. I do," The Soldier replied, handing the keycard to him once more, before turning back to the car. Rogers couldn't offer a rebuttal before he was alone in the parking lot.

**Author's Note:**

> Co-written by a friend who wishes to remain anonymous. Sort of inspired by a dream I had a while back, sort of inspired by late night musings while listening to music.


End file.
